TOP NEWS

Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation of the Rs 6,700-crore Renukaji Dam project from Himachal Pradesh’s Mandi town today. The project on the Giri river in Sirmaur district, once completed, is expected to generate 200 million units of energy in a surface power house with 40 MW installed capacity which would be utilized by the state.

The Himachal Pradesh government claims that the storage capacity of the dam would be 498 million cubic meters which would fulfill about 40 per cent of the drinking water requirement of Delhi.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee tweeted on Monday about the alleged freezing of accounts of Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata, the recent moratorium on foreign donations to another prominent organisation, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), has once again raised question marks on the powers of suspension under key provisions of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) 2010.

The CHRI had its Foreign Contributions (FC) suspended around six months ago following which the well-known civil liberties group moved Delhi High Court. Now, a second suspension order has been issued. According to provisions of Section 13 in the Act, the suspension lasts 180 days each time and, the order in the CHRI case states, the action is “pending cancellation” of the NGO’s FCRA registration.

Maharashtra, Kerala and Delhi continued to report a rise in cases of Omicron - the latest, more transmissible variant of the coronavirus first detected in South Africa. While Maharashtra and Kerala reported 31 and 19 cases respectively, Delhi tally omicron patients reached 68. Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh also reported their first Omicron cases. So far, 422 Omicron cases have been detected across 17 states and union territories in India and 130 of these people have recovered or migrated, according to Union health ministry data updated on Sunday.\

Here are top 10 developments on rise of Omicron cases in India:

The Centre on Sunday moved the Supreme Court seeking recall of its December 17 order de-reserving seats for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in MP panchayat polls while asserting that holding elections without ensuring adequate representation of the community in elected bodies in grassroots-level governance was contrary to the mandate of the Constitution.

Alternatively, the SC could defer the polls for four months and seek a report within three months from the commission already engaged in identifying seats to be reserved for backward classes, the Centre suggested. Till the time elections were held with seats reserved for the OBC community, administrators could be appointed as a stop-gap arrangement, it said. Questioning the correctness of the SC’s December 17 order, the Centre said it was impermissible for the court to interfere at a stage when the election process, providing for representation of persons belonging to the OBC community, had already commenced.

Chief Justice of India N V Ramana Sunday cited the prohibition law in Bihar as an example of “lack of foresight” in drafting legislation that leads to courts being inundated with cases, and said it appears that the legislature has “not been able to make optimum use” of the Parliament Standing Committee system to “enhance scrutiny of Bills”.

“I hope this will change, as such scrutiny improves the quality of legislation,” CJI Ramana said while delivering the Fifth Late Shri Lavu Venkateswarlu Endowment Lecture on “Indian Judiciary: Challenges of Future” at Siddhartha Law College in Vijayawada.
In his speech, the CJI also defended the judiciary in the wake of charges that the Collegium system of appointment of judges amounted to judges appointing themselves, terming it as “one of the widely propagated myths”.